Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

edwagreen What made this film so excellent was the excellent plot twists. You go from moment to moment wondering who is for the good and who is for evil, even when in reality you know.Robert Donat is marvelous here as the English chemist who goes to Czechoslovakia to destroy a Nazi based gas plant. Along the way, he meets with the Hobson character, a Czech playing woman who appears on the onset to be a collaborator of the worst kind. Go know that she is really working for the Czech anti-Nazi underground.Glynis Johns appears briefly as the young lady who attempts sabotage in the film and then condemns herself to death as she realizes that Donat saw her do this and that he would blow his cover if he said otherwise.Exciting with a host of Nazi characters, one worse than the other.

chrisart7 "The Adventures of Tartu" has a fine opening scene, quickly establishing Robert Donat as a cool and collected expert in defusing bomb which hadn't exploded in one of the Nazi's blitzes of London. The scenes which follow are a bit erratic. Donat's acting is always superb, but the dialog and situations which he has been given generally do not build suspense or audience sympathy. There are fleetingly good lines and occasionally good moments, but the opening and the finale are the finest parts of the film---it would seem that these were the most concentrated upon by the filmmakers, with the centre section being somewhat secondary.The closing scenario and its seemingly expansive set anticipate that of "Dr. No" and many subsequent Bond films. Donat essayed a similar role in "Knight Without Armour" (1937) in which he was a British spy posing as a Russian revolutionary during and after WWI, but that film was far superior on every level to this one. Still, any film with Donat is interesting at the very least, and "Tartu" is fairly good.Thus far (as of 2013) a very clear print of this motion picture hasn't surfaced, but perhaps Criterion will restore/release one in the future, should the British Film Institute or some such other organisation have a good transfer from the original negative on hand.

Neil Doyle Robert Donat gives a very spirited performance as a British spy fluent in languages who is assigned to sabotage a Nazi gas factory in Czechoslovakia. He's more action-oriented than usual in a role requiring a lot of physical action while keeping one step ahead of the Nazis.His spying activities also include some romantic moments with lovely Valerie Hobson, a woman who openly flirts with Nazi officers while working with the Czech underground. She and Donat join forces eventually but some misunderstandings almost ruin their partnership. The clever plot takes a number of interesting twists as the story unfolds in a brisk and very compelling manner.Photography is first rate as are the various sets, especially the unique looking laboratory with its glass elevator overlooking an elaborate looking set design. Donat is charming in the central role and gets solid support from an excellent British supporting cast. Especially good are Walter Rilla as an officer in love with Hobson and Glynis Johns in a small role as an ill-fated Czech loyalist.Highly recommended as one of the best espionage yarns from the U.K. during the war years.

theowinthrop Robert Donat is one of my favorite actors of the 1930s to 1950s. Despite a relatively small film output (roughly 25 movies I believe) Donat showed a wide variety of different parts, including comedy, historical, character studies, spy films (including THE 39 STEPS for Hitchcock), and straight drama. He never gave a bad performance even if the film left some problems. And all was accomplished despite being a serious asthmatic. To top it off, he pulled off the all time miracle "Oscar" for best actor. He beat Clarke Gable in 1939, when Gable's "Rhett Butler" was the odds favorite for best role. Donat trumped it with the schoolmaster, "Mr. Chipping", in GOODBYE MR. CHIPS. Fans of GONE WITH THE WIND may have cause to grumble (forgetting Gable already won the Oscar as "Peter Warne" in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT) but fans of Donat (and they included Walter Matthau, who said he was his favorite actor) have never complained.SABOTAGE AGENT is known in the U.S. as THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU. The title change is understandable. There are so many films with "sabotage" in the title (Hitchcock had "SABOTAGE" in 1936 and "SABOTEUR" in 1943). But the name is misleading accidentally. "Jan Tartu" is the false identity name given to Donat's character Captain Terence Stevenson when he is sent on a mission into Czechoslovakia during World War II. The ADVENTURES OF STEVENSON would have been less misleading on this point, but people might have thought that it referred to the author of TREASURE ISLAND.Stevenson, a linguist, has been on home watch duty, but is selected for the mission due to his grasp on central European languages, specifically, Czech, Roumanian, and German (a neat trick, by the way, as these are from three separate language groups: Slavic, Latin, and Germanic - Stevenson must have been like my father, a real super expert on foreign tongues). The real Tartu (who has conveniently been killed) was a member of Roumania's native Fascist group, "The Iron Guard". The Roumanians joined the Axis in 1941, having seen what happened to the most pro-Western Balkan state (Yugoslavia) which was invaded and bombed (as was Greece). Roumania and Bulgaria (the latter reluctantly) joined the Nazis (Roumania did it willingly in expectation of expanding its borders, Bulgaria to protect itself from the Russians under Stalin). It's instructive to follow what happened in both countries. From the King on down in Bulgaria there was a general refusal to cooperate in sending Jews to their deaths in German camps, so that 90% of Bulgaria's Jews (the largest number of ANY country in Europe) survived World War II. Roumania handed the bulk of them over.Donat goes to Prague as Tartu, and plays him as a flamboyant nitwit. The Nazis have little real use for him in Prague (he is there on some trivial diplomatic excuse) and find him more of a nuisance than anything else. Donat decides to allow the Nazis to find just useless he is - in one sequence he manages to insist on "helping" them capture an anti-Nazi partisan. Of course the partisan escapes while the Nazis are forced to see "Tartu" pounding on a wall as though he is doing something remarkably clever.The mission is to find the secret factory where a deadly new gas is being manufactured (this is a running theme in many films of the 1930s and 1940s - a secret poison gas that some country is manufacturing to use on the battlefield: memories of the battles of World War I prevented people from considering poison gas used on civilian prisoners for "ethnic cleansing" purposes). With the assistance of Glynis Johns and Valerie Hobson Donat does find the factory, cleverly hidden within a mountain. Now the problem is to destroy it, which leads to an exciting conclusion within the factory within the mountain.Unusual for most Donat films (only KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOUR has as much daring-do involving Donat and co-star Marlene Dietrich fleeing the Bolsheviks in 1919) THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU is a good escapist film. Although the references in it put it firmly in 1943 when it was made it is still an entertaining film for today. The performances are good, with Johns quite moving as she sacrifices herself for Donat's mission, and Hobson being forced to descend to murder to help as well. I recommend it for those performances, as well as Donat's over-the-top one as the eccentric "Iron Guardist".